'Tracker' from foe puts assemblyman on defense

"Tracker" from foe puts assemblyman on the defensive

Published 12:00 am, Saturday, October 2, 2010

Assemblyman Tim Gordon, I-Bethlehem, has been shadowed by an opposition tracker, who recorded some of his open events.

Assemblyman Tim Gordon, I-Bethlehem, has been shadowed by an opposition tracker, who recorded some of his open events.

Image 2 of 2

Ken Girardin, the campaign manager for his candidate Republican Assembly challenger Steve McLaughlin, second from left, has followed incumbent Tim Gordon to his meetings with constituents at area libraries, videotaped every minute and posted the edited footage on McLaughlin?s YouTube channel. McLaughlin appears in this image with other GOP state legislative candidates from Albany County, including Deborah Busch, far left, McLaughlin, Bob Domenici, and Jennifer Whalen, far right, at a Capitol news conference in July. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union) less

Ken Girardin, the campaign manager for his candidate Republican Assembly challenger Steve McLaughlin, second from left, has followed incumbent Tim Gordon to his meetings with constituents at area libraries, ... more

Photo: PAUL BUCKOWSKI

'Tracker' from foe puts assemblyman on defense

1 / 2

Back to Gallery

Assemblyman Tim Gordon, I-Bethlehem, is hardly excited for his close-up.

For the past two weeks, Ken Girardin, the campaign manager for challenger Republican Steve McLaughlin, has followed Gordon to his meetings with constituents at area libraries, videotaped every minute and posted the edited footage on McLaughlin's YouTube channel.

Most recently, Girardin was a fly on the wall Wednesday in Bethlehem, Thursday morning in Valatie and in Kinderhook that afternoon -- much to the incumbent's apparent exasperation.

"This whole connecting me to someone else to make a point for his camera -- I can see through you. You're so apparent," said Gordon before turning to stare into the lens. "You don't have my permission to put me on the camera either, buddy."

About two-thirds of the way through, Gordon appears fed up. "You are a fraud, sir," he tells Lucarelli. "You're not coming here to talk about issues, you're coming here for his camera."

"Jeez," Lucarelli says. "Way to treat a constituent."

The clip, filmed at the Poestenkill Library, had been viewed more than 800 times by Friday morning.

Whether Gordon likes it or not, candid cameras have become nearly ubiquitous on the campaign trail. "Trackers" like Girardin follow the opposition to events in the hopes of catching embarrassing remarks that the Internet won't let fade away.

In 2006, the re-election campaign of U.S. Sen. George Allen flopped in Virginia when the Republican was caught on tape referring to an Indian-American tracker using an offensive slur, "macaca." Though Allen claimed ignorance of the word's meaning, the damage was done: He lost his seat to Democrat Jim Webb.

So far, Girardin hasn't caught Gordon showing much more than annoyance. In another video, shot at the Brunswick Community Library, Gordon walks around casting bemused looks at the tracker. As the lens zooms on his face, he says in frustration, "I'm not going to stand here and be taped for your own amusement anymore."

Gordon conceded in an interview that because the videos are filmed in public, there's not much he can do to stop them -- however greatly they may irritate him. "It may be within legal rights," he said, "but I don't see how that's going to solve anybody's problem of trying to pay taxes or find employment to make ends meet."

Not content to let McLaughlin's camp play director, Gordon has assigned his own campaign volunteers to film him whenever the tracker is in the room. The footage is "to have for our own protection," Gordon said.

Girardin says he has spent a dozen hours producing the videos (which use a typeface that evokes the NBC drama "The West Wing"). He views himself as a documentarian conducting "research."

"Tim Gordon has engaged in a sustained campaign to distort his record," Girardin said. "We believe that by showing the facts and letting the people decide by seeing things for themselves, the people will come to the right decision."

Lucarelli, who asked Gordon about property taxes, said he attended the event on his own and did not communicate with McLaughlin's campaign.

"I found him to be defensive and combative," said Lucarelli, 44, an enrolled Republican who is a business professor at the College of Saint Rose.

Lucarelli said he did not know that cameras would be present before he arrived, though he was aware they were rolling during the conversation. He did not recognize the man behind the camera, he said, even though Girardin handled his mortgage at a bank about six years ago.

"I'm not a supporter of Mr. Gordon's, I have never been," Lucarelli said, "but he's my assemblyman and I wanted to ask a question. And that's what I did."